It's a shipment of Pringles packed in one-chip packages with "Once you pop, you don't stop. If you want more, overthow Kim Jong Un." After the citizens get their taste of such goodness, they will demand for more Pringles and overthrow Kim Jong Un.

eyeq360:It's a shipment of Pringles packed in one-chip packages with "Once you pop, you don't stop. If you want more, overthow Kim Jong Un." After the citizens get their taste of such goodness, they will demand for more Pringles and overthrow Kim Jong Un.

rabidarmadillo24:Are countries required to inform the world of their diplomatic overtures?

No. But North Korea is firing missiles over Japan, and Japan used to be a very close partner on security. They have a natural expectation that we would inform them of equipment we're bringing to North Korea, a nation that is building nuclear weapons and wants to destroy Japan.

Perhaps there is something extreme enough to justify this (like North Korea having a radioactive accident and the USA cleaning it up with a promise for absolute secrecy), but it is a diplomatic black eye.

Arcanum:rabidarmadillo24: Are countries required to inform the world of their diplomatic overtures?

No. But North Korea is firing missiles over Japan, and Japan used to be a very close partner on security. They have a natural expectation that we would inform them of equipment we're bringing to North Korea, a nation that is building nuclear weapons and wants to destroy Japan.

Perhaps there is something extreme enough to justify this (like North Korea having a radioactive accident and the USA cleaning it up with a promise for absolute secrecy), but it is a diplomatic black eye.

Pyongyang wouldn't want it to be too publicly known, and it was almost certainly something either towards NK disarmament, dismantling it's missile and/or nuclear program, repatriation of remains from the Korean War, or otherwise towards peace negotiations.

The suggestion that NK had a nuclear accident and quietly asked for technical advice/help in cleanup/containment is intriguing, because containing an accident would be in everyones best interest, besides containing environmental damage, NK gets to hide that their program isn't as advanced as they'd like to put on, and we get to find out technical details of their program through the cleanup and nuclear forensics.

Y'know, in all those Wikileaks threads when people say why do diplomatic communications need to remain secret? If this happened in the open with no expectation of secrecy at all, Best Korea almost certainly wouldn't have agreed to it.

I know everybody wants to know everything, but sometimes things are secret for a perfectly good reason.

As for not telling Japan, for all we know that was one of the conditions Best Korea laid down for these talks or whatever assistance was provided. Funny thing about diplomacy: you don't even tell your closest allies everything, but you do tell them everything that leads to mutual benefit. Everybody has secrets, and everybody spies on each other, even close allies. You've also got the things that everybody knows is true (like Israel having nuclear arms, so other Arab states don't try to invade them again, because there WILL be mushroom clouds if they try) but they officially deny (to play nice with the Nonproliferation Treaty and push us into an awkward position).

loki see loki do:Why the fark would the US clean up a North Korean nuclear mess?We want them to be a nuclear mess.That is possibly the dumbest thing I have ever read on Fark.

Radioisotopes from Chernobyl showed up in Western Europe.

Radioisotopes from Fukushima turned up on the US west coast.

During the days of above-ground tests, the entire planet had a nice little blanket of background radiation from it, one big reason for the international ban on atmospheric testing.

Containment of nuclear incidents crosses international boundaries, and you can bet that NK having an "oops" might well cause problems in SK, or Japan, or Taiwan, or the PRC, ect. If Japan thought that NK was doing anything that spread radioactive contamination onto their soil, that would be very bad for them with their internal politics. That situation is touchy enough as-is, Japan finding out they have contamination from a nuclear fallout plume from NK would just be gasoline on the fire in the region.

Why ask the US instead of the PRC? Because we have more technical expertise on the issue, and because the whole point of their missile and nuclear programs is global-scale attention whoring and they want the US to pay attention to them on this issue (while discouraging conventional warfare, because if the Korean peninsula went into a shooting war again, Seoul might become a crater inside of 10 minutes, but in the long term NK would lose big time because of a serious lack of fuel, food and other strategic resources).

North Korea is dangerous, unstable and guaranteed to lash out if their existence is threatened. Their time is running out, they WILL attack. So the only question is when? And should we fight on our terms or theirs?

It's hard to come up with a non-tinfoil hat explanation better then the fact that the U.S. simply wants to foster peace and end DPRK nuclear and missile testing. North Korea is a paranoid place, and Little Kim has a tenuous hold on things. It's something that obviously and legitimately is going to require discretion.

Not to mention there is still technically a war going on. You don't come in the front door beating drums and blowing horns if you're trying ease tensions.

It's certainly better than the setback we suffered when they were branded an "Axis of Evil" by some knee-jerkwads.

MutantMotherMouse:eyeq360: It's a shipment of Pringles packed in one-chip packages with "Once you pop, you don't stop. If you want more, overthow Kim Jong Un." After the citizens get their taste of such goodness, they will demand for more Pringles and overthrow Kim Jong Un.

StopLurkListen:North Korea is dangerous, unstable and guaranteed to lash out if their existence is threatened. Their time is running out, they WILL attack. So the only question is when? And should we fight on our terms or theirs?